Month: November 2005

My old college town paper, the Lawrence Journal-World, reports that two new classes at the University of Kansas will work to discredit the theory of intelligent design. One class, taught by religion professor Paul Mirecki, chairman of KU’s religious studies department, was initially titled Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and Other Religious Mythologies. […]

CNN strikes again, delivering a completely biased story about the debate over intelligent desgin. In their treatment of Dr. Behe, CNN’s editors used short quotes from Dr. Behe interspersed with factually inaccurate voiceovers to mislead viewers about Dr. Behe’s views on intelligent design. Rather than let Dr. Behe in his own words define intelligent design, and his work related to it, CNN correspondent Delia Gallegher puts words in his mouth wrongly stating: “Michael Behe is a major player behind intelligent design, the movement that’s trying to bring the supernatural into science.”

Media coverage of a recent lawsuit filed against UC Berkeley and NSF shows again the media’s inability to cover the debate over evolution accurately and without bias. Casey Luskin’s reports: “The AP wrongly insinuates that attorney Larry Caldwell is arguing that government funding of a website promoting neo-Darwinian theory is itself unconstitutional. It also falsely insinuates that Caldwell is somehow arguing that teaching neo-Darwinian theory is inherently religious or inherently unconstitutional. In reality, Caldwell’s legal arguments are altogether different, and very precise.” Read the rest of this story at www.evolutionnews.org.

The recent actions by the Kansas State Board of Education have given a site like Evolution News and Views, which is dedicated to help correct misinformation in the media about the debate over Darwin, an endless supply of material. This time, however, the IDEA Center has also posted some good responses to the San Diego Union Tribune’s (SDUT) recent anti-ID editorial chastely titled “Voodoo Science.” The SDUT piece makes a number of mistakes about the recent events in Kansas.

In the last week, two anti-ID editorials have been posted on various major media sites. This includes an article by Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post entitled, Phony Theory, False Conflict and an article at Tech Central Station by Uriah Kriegel entitled, Is Intelligent Design a Bad Scientific Theory or a Non-Scientific Theory?. Both articles […]

Charles Krauthammer’s syndicated essay against intelligent design ran opposite mine in today’s Seattle Times. The piece is full of problems, which Tom Gilson and Lawrence Seldon explore in loving detail here and here. Now I would have framed a couple of points in their otherwise fine analysis a little differently. In one place,

The Catholic church is struggling to make the mainstream media understand and report its position on science, Darwinism, and materialism. This is no more apparent than the recent speech by the Pope and now a followup by Cardinal Schoenborn senior editor of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Read “Good Humored Cardinal Inspired by Pope in Debate Over Evolution and Intelligent Design” at www.evolutionnews.org.

The Pope’s comments on intelligent design in nature have been missed, or misreported, by much of the mainstream media. Read the full article, “In Evolution Debate The Media Are More Catholic Than The Pope.”

Kansas reinstated a traditional definition of science which reads: “Science is a systematic method of continuing investigation that uses observation, hypothesis testing, measurement, experimentation, logical argument and theory-building to lead to more adequate explanations of natural phenomena.” This is nearly identical to the definition of science adhered to in 40 states across the country (nine states do not define science at all). Kansas is the only state that did not have a traditional definition of science.